55 Years of Florida Trend

As the magazine turns 55, we review some interesting covers and the articles inside.

| 12/9/2013

December 1976 / February 1997

Women CEOs

A Trend cover in the 1960s showed several unnamed women at work at an electronics company, but the first women CEOs on the cover appeared in the December 1976 issue. Among the three women pictured on the cover was Joyce Beber (on left), an ad executive who co-founded the Beber-Silverstein Group in Miami. The firm did a campaign for the state of Florida with the tagline, “The rules are different here” and also did ad campaigns for hotelier Leona Helmsley, who hired and fired the firm four times. Coincidentally, Beber’s daughter Jennifer, president of the company today, was featured on Trend’s cover in February 1997 (on left) — also in a group of three women.

January 1980

Temper, Temper

The January 1980 cover story featured the tempestuous owner of the New York Yankees, who owned American Ship Building in Tampa. Acknowledgement of Steinbrenner’s generosity as a philanthropist competed with his reputation for a quick temper. From the story: “He yells a lot,” one former Steinbrenner public relations representative recalls, reflecting further, “A lot.”

September 1986

High Flier

David Paul, CEO of CenTrust Savings, took over a $2-billion S&L that was losing $9 million a month and built it into the biggest S&L in the South, with $6 billion in assets. The savings and loan industry tanked later in the decade, and CenTrust failed in 1990 at a loss of $1.7 billion. Paul went to prison for making personal use of millions of dollars in company funds and became an icon of the S&L-collapse era. In July 2010, Paul spoke with Florida Trend, saying, “To say that I stole $2.5 million out of a bank that I and my family and two close friends owned 85% of is absurd. The public thinks that, but it’s not true. I wasn’t broke when I came down here. I already had made $150 million.”